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Ripka's closes in downtown Bridgeport

Michael P. Mayko
| on December 23, 2013

Photo: BK Angeletti, B.K. Angeletti

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Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, packs up after six months of trying to run a food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013.

Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, packs up after six months of trying to run a food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013.

Photo: BK Angeletti, B.K. Angeletti

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Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, left, packs up after six months of trying to run a food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013. less

Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, left, packs up after six months of trying to run a food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, ... more

Photo: BK Angeletti, B.K. Angeletti

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Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, left, and Davis Johnson, pack up after six months of trying to run a food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013. less

Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, left, and Davis Johnson, pack up after six months of trying to run a food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on ... more

Photo: BK Angeletti, B.K. Angeletti

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Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, right, donates the remaining food before closing the food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013. less

Clyde Ripka, owner of Ripka's Bridgeport Market, right, donates the remaining food before closing the food shop and cafe in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, ... more

Photo: BK Angeletti, B.K. Angeletti

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Ripka's Bridgeport Market is closing in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013.

Ripka's Bridgeport Market is closing in the Arcade building on Main Street in downtown Bridgeport, Conn. on Monday, Dec.23, 2013.

Photo: BK Angeletti, B.K. Angeletti

Ripka's closes in downtown Bridgeport

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BRIDGEPORT-- The packing and wrapping that Clyde Ripka did Monday was not the happy kind expected two days before Christmas.

"Excuse me," he said pausing as his voice choked with emotion. "I'm kind of feeling melancholy right now."

As Ripka taped boxes shut and plastic wrap around appliances, he packed up his dream -- heralded just six months earlier as the boon to downtown.

"I left a lot of blood, sweat and tears on these floors," he said. "I had a great group of employees."

Ripka's, the Arcade's 7,500-square-foot market with separate grocery, deli, bakery and cafe sections, closed for good with a half-price sale Saturday at 5 p.m.

"I probably should have closed three or four weeks ago," Ripka said, as he helped volunteers from the Bridgeport Rescue Mission pack moving boxes with the remaining produce and canned goods that would now feed the needy and hungry. "But I was hopeful."

Hopeful that store traffic would pick up, particularly with more and more residents moving downtown. Hopeful that investors would join in Ripka's dream. Hopeful that somehow, somewhere, another $600,000 would appear and possibly get him through these lean times.

"I knew, going in, this was a huge leap of faith," he said. "My business plan was projected two-and-a-half years out."

Unfortunately, Ripka said, "the traffic wasn't there, and we were burning money."

So much money that he repeatedly cut back hours and trimmed staff.

Weekends were so bad that Ripka closed Sunday and cut Saturday hours.

"You know, if I plopped this down in Fairfield, Greenwich, Norwalk or Westport, I would have knocked 'em dead," he said. "Here we were just chasing our tail."

In a prepared statement, Finch said, "We've enjoyed working with Clyde Ripka and his staff during his time in downtown. I wish him all the best on his other business ventures."

The mayor said David Kooris, Bridgeport's economic development director, and his staff "are working collaboratively with the building owner to help identify a potential tenant that can take advantage of this prime downtown storefront."

Nancy Hadley, who lives downtown and served as the city's economic development director under former Mayor John Fabrizi, said she knows what she would have done.

"If I were still the economic development director, there would have been a call to arms," she said, regarding Ripka's closing. "I would have gotten the city, the state and the private downtown developers into a room and told them this is a crisis, and as stakeholders in the downtown we've got to do something ... This sends a bad message."

Hadley, Ripka and Phil Kuchma, a former councilman who has developed hundreds of apartments downtown, agreed that success for a market the size of Ripka's is at least two years away. That's when another 1,100 downtown apartments are expected to be completed.

Kuchma said Ripka took on too much too soon. He said the deli, grocery, bakery and cafe might have worked better as four stores, rather than being lumped into a market -- or at least the business should have been given time to grow into those specialities.

"When we were renovating the Bijou Theatre, a day didn't go by when someone wouldn't come up to me and ask, `When is it going to open?' " Kuchma said. "Well, we've been open for some time now and we're making it, but people aren't lining up outside. I don't think any of those people who were asking when it was going to open have shown up."

He said the 900 apartments downtown need to grow to about 2,000 to support a market as large as Ripka's.